Philip Zimbardo and the Stanford Prison Experiement


Philip Zimbardo is interviewed on Democracy Now about his new book about his notorious 1971 "prison experiment" at Stanford in which he observed 24 students in a simulated prison turn into fawning prisoners and nazi-like prison guards. It turned so terrible that he cancelled the experiment after only a few days. It seems that all it takes to turn average American students into monsters is a uniform and a hierarchy of authority. It is very similar to Stanley Milgram's conclusions. Here is a key passage:
In a broader sense what the study really gets at, and what I try to capture in the The Lucifer Effect is that, it’s really a celebration of the human mind infinite capacity to be kind, or cruel, caring or selfish, creative or destructive. To make some of us be villains and some of us heroes. And it all depends on the situation. When we have total freedom, we choose situations that we know we can control. But when we're in situations where other people are in charge, in the military, in prisons, in some schools, in some families, we are – we can be transformed.

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Posted: Wed - April 18, 2007 at 03:10 PM        

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